----

Sean And Hermione, In The Ministry

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The Ministry had seen better days. Internally, it was structured like some kind of overgrown subway station, all forty-foot black stone arches and cavernous cliff’s-edges bordered on the walls by columns of geometrically impossible offices- every window looking in on a different corner, even the ones that were two feet apart. The place should have felt damp and claustrophobic, but there were a variety of domes and skylights giving the whole thing a more open feel.

None of that was what caught my eye. Rather, it was the animated statues that came bull-rushing at us the second we stepped through the door. Hermione squealed, still under the cloak, and I stepped forward on instinct to take them apart even as they raised their giant bronze fists to squash us. At the last second a voice called out. “Hold!” They paused instantly, cut off and as still as if they’d been sculpted that way, in the very act of assaulting intruders to the place. “Friend or foe?” Called the mysterious interloper, and I looked around the base of the giant metal centaur in front of me to see who was calling.

“My god,” I breathed. “The ministry hasn’t fallen?” The walls were chipped and blackened, some of the skylights were shattered- and the statues were on the move, of course- but around the doors to the lower levels, a perimeter still existed. They’d held out in here for four full days, by the look of it. A cadre of aurors, wizard cops essentially, and a smattering of haggard looking civilians were still manning barricades at that side of the room. One of them had their wand to their throat- projecting to me, no doubt. “Uh, friend! Friend,” I answered, careful not to implicate Hermione even while trying to get my wits about me. “You’re all in terrible danger and I need to find a blue-eyed girl who’s down in the lower levels already.”

Most of them were busy maintaining Patronus charms, which explained why the dementors outside hadn’t swarmed the place yet, but one of the biggest of the black-robed aurors came marching towards me. She was wide-set like a brick wall and had a look on her face that said she could keep holding those gates all year if she had to. “Amelia Bones, Department of Magical Law Enforcement. None of the brainwashed have made it inside. We’re sheltering half the ministry down here. You think we don’t know about the danger? We can see what’s going on topside as well as you. Were you with the dragon or the genies?”

My heart beat faster to hear any of that referred to in the past tense. “Sean, uh Peakes. I am with the dragon. Currently. We’ve been at Hogwarts. The siege is broken but the war has shifted, the archway in the Department of Mysteries is the next target. Haley, that’s the dragon, is keeping the heat off us but I need to get down there.” I carefully made no mention of the invisible girl at my side.

She crossed her arms, eyebrow raised at my mention of the arch that should have been a state secret, but unconvinced. “Bullshit. Dumbledore would have sent us warning.”

I sighed. “I am the warning. Dumbledore is dead.” I held up the Elder Wand for her to inspect. She recognized it and gasped, the first sign of distress I’d seen on her. A murmur ran through the rest of the wizards on the other side of the room. “I really need to get down there- practically nothing else matters, at this point. You can send an escort if you want. Likely this room will fall in the next few minutes. I’m… sorry, for what it’s worth.”

She recovered quickly enough. “It’s not worth much. You can’t go, but I’ll send two men that I trust down to check things out. You want to help, you can hold the line up here with me.” I considered, trying not to look at where I knew Hermione was. I felt her hand take mine and squeeze. She understood- this was going to be her opportunity, and her trial.

I wanted to reassure her, to be with her. I’d barely had time to teach her anything in the last four days. But in the end- “It won’t be about magic. Whoever goes down there has got to keep their wits about them. Whatever’s waiting for them, it will be beatable. Somehow.” I only hoped she could understand my warning to her. I nodded at the enormous woman. “Alright then. I’ll help you hold as long as I can.” We strode towards the barricades and the bedraggled last defenders of the Ministry. Up close, they were a sorry sight- robes torn to pieces, injured, hungry and tired. They’d been under near-constant siege for days and it showed in the way their eyes and wands followed me, even when I offered no threat. Bones walked off to select two of her team, Hermione no doubt close behind, and I began preparing a few last… surprises, for the hordes that would be bearing down on us at any second. As I’d told my wife- the time for nonlethal measures was long past. If we won, we’d set it to rights. If we lost- well, the universe was screwed anyway. I set out to make Moody proud. I didn’t have long to wait.

----

Hermione rode the elevator. As big moments went, this didn’t feel like much of one to her. Not that she was complaining- she would much rather be invisible and crouched behind two burly aurors on her way to her final conflict than facing a horde of zombies. It was just- they even had that tinny music playing in here, and it was very hard to feel anything but silly as she stood there hoping she wasn’t too late to save the world. Fawkes coo’d softly into her ear, too quietly to be heard by the men, even as close as they were standing.

“You think there’s anything to it?” Asked one auror of the other.

“The way this week is gone? I’d be more surprised if there wasn’t. ‘Constant Vigilance,’ at’s what Alastor always says. We go in wands-up, yeah?” They nodded at each other and got ready. At least they were taking this seriously, Hermione thought.

Not, apparently, seriously enough. There was a rumble from up above, and the elevator shook in its housing. “Kicking off up above, I bet” said one of the two, glancing nervously upwards. “Maybe we should-” but whatever his suggestion was going to be, it came too late. With a clang the elevator began to drop into freefall, and both men cursed and threw hexes at the walls. Hermione was nearly thrown to the floor as its plummet was arrested, and the doors were pulled open from the outside. A glance at the floor indicator told her they were on six- “Brocéliande,” the sign read. The men threw up shields as the doors were torn open but it did them no good- the blue-eyed, red-skinned giant standing outside the elevator sneered at them, and thrust his trident into the space so hard that it went clear through one auror, pinning him to the back wall with a sickening crunch. He clutched at the flaming metal and tried to summon words, but went still.

The other auror let out a wordless shout of anger and blew the efreet back from the doors, leaping through to take the fight to them- Hermione bit back her own cry of despair and tried to muffle the screech from Fawkes as she followed, only glancing back at the dead man once as she strode into the space. It was hundreds of feet tall, built like the intersection at the center of a cathedral, with more sunlit windows in the domes- despite their depth underground. Where the four surrounding chapel-like structures intersected, there was a tree- floating wholly in the air, branches stretched above and roots completely exposed below in an odd visual symmetry. Petals drifted throughout the room on winds that affected only them- and coming through tremendous holes punched in the ceiling was an army of blue-eyed monsters, robots, and dementors. At their head was one man whom she recognized. The wizard who had taunted Haley after the bomb had hit her. The one who her mentor thought might have been Merlin. He looked like he’d had a rough day- while still capable of flight, he was clutching a bloody hole in his side. As he drew closer she saw he was covered in lacerations and his robes were torn to pieces. His eyes looked wild and he was shouting instructions to his remaining minions as they flew. “Go! Go! To the arch! It’s the only way out of here now, damn them all! Asriel won’t bury me in a tide of bodies!” Then he seemed to notice the pathetic resistance lined up against him on this floor. He flicked a hand towards them and dismissed them from his attention.

The remaining auror growled and threw up additional shields, backing towards the elevator as Hermione threw herself to the side. A barrage of rail rifle shots from the brainwashed drones battered at him, breaking portions of his defenses away and drawing blood- and in one case, punching a hole clean through his thigh. But the flames were what really taxed him- the magical fire of the Efreet burned right through his defenses and sent him howling to one side, slapping at his robes as he tried to put them out. He had seconds to live, at most. She had to do something!

Fawkes poked her in the side, urging her to let him out of the cloak- she obliged and he flashed at the older wizard with a cry of fury and a burst of flames. Merlin threw up his hands in defense, crying out, but the angry phoenix still raked his face hard enough that it looked like he might have claimed an eye. His cries drew the attention of his minions, pulling some heat off of the embattled auror, but now Fawkes was in the line of fire, and despite his blipping around the room he wouldn’t last long.

If only she had more magic! Sean had said it wouldn’t be about that, but- if she was just strong enough to overpower this force! In the corner several of the drones had come together and were using their gravity weapons like rail rifles, punching a hole through to the next level- the Department of Mysteries, she knew. Her destination. She could just run and throw herself down the hole invisibly, but- to leave this man and Fawkes to die? She would never.

Brocéliande, the name of this place had read. That had to mean something- she racked her brain. Something from the magical histories of Britain came to her- of course! The last resting place of Merlin, the rumors went- trapped in… in a tree! “That man… he isn’t our Merlin, is he?” she mused, thinking of what Sean had told her of worlds within worlds, examining the gently rotating tree as the firefight raged behind her. The auror still battling the scattered drones and genies had found some second wind with the appearance of Fawkes, and was holding his own despite dripping wounds and mounting damage to the room itself. A plan began to form in her mind, and she ran to the tree itself.

Whipping the cloak off, she called to the old wizard. “Hey! Merlin! Over here!” His head whipped around, one eye still shut tight after the damage done by the fiery bird.

“ You,” he snarled. “Even here, their narrative sparring entraps us! What’s your game, girl?” A staff appeared in his hand- he’d definitely not been holding it before- and he swung it at her. She ducked behind the tree as a blast of razor-edged wind tore great gouges out of the floor around her. The tree itself was unmoved- as it should be, if it truly was designed the way she thought. “Are you the one they sent down here, to defend the veil?” He laughed cruelly. She could hear him drawing closer as he spoke. “An untrained little girl, not yet come into her power? I’d thought the husband would be brave enough to come on his own, at least. If you are the last line of defense before Gretchen- so be it. I’ll make it quick for you, child.” He was on the other side of the trunk from her.

She darted out. “ Accio Robes!” The older wizard’s clothes lurched forward and towards her- and the tree. He put out one hand to brace himself against it, snorting in contempt- a snort that changed to a gasp of alarm, when his hand stuck. And began to sink in.

“More than just a girl,” she taunted. “A girl who’s read the whole library before she even got to Hogwarts. Brocéliande, that was the name of this floor. That was the name of the forest where you get trapped, forever. Some legends say you were stuck in a tree. I guess the wizards dug it up.” He snarled and shoved against the tree, trying to free himself- but each point of contact only stuck more firmly. He was halfway in, now, and still struggling. As his body passed that point, a hand shot out- and gripped him. Hermione thought she knew whose it was. “I don’t know which story you came from, but in the end you only wanted to save yourself. I hope the Merlin who’s still in the tree has something to say, about that.” The hand and the wizard were drawn within, and the entire tree rippled, like the surface was a disturbed pool.

Absent the wizard’s control, the minions in the room subsided. But it was too late for the auror- he was slumped against the wall, Fawkes sitting sadly on his head. At least there was a look of peace on his face as the floor beneath him turned red from his wounds. There was no time to mourn, but she would remember him- both of them- later. In the meantime, she needed to get down that hole to her final destination.

Behind her the tree, last prison of two Merlins now, began to glow and vibrate.

----

The second the elevator doors had closed, they were on us. The doors of the Ministry on the opposite side of the room burst open and a tide of dementors blasted through, like a crashing black wave of death. We formed a near-solid wall of Patronus charms, my silver-white dragon leading the charge, and tore hundreds of them to pieces. But there were just too many- and behind them, the green-eyed hordes, now fully feral. I had just lived through this nightmare once in the tower at Hogwarts- it seemed I was doomed to relive it a second time.

Amelia Bones was next to me, taking a human or red-skinned efreet off their feet with every blast. I swept my magic through our ranks, her draconic form tearing apart the few dementors that had managed to penetrate the barriers and begin latching onto the defenders. The zombies couldn’t produce any return fire, being consumed by not one but two dueling memetic impulses, blue and green, but then- they didn’t need to. They were nearly infinite.

I triggered the first of the traps I’d prepared. A monomolecular cable of near-infinite strength, strung from one side of the room to the other at neck height. It was already sectioning the zombies that tried to force their way past it, but that was just the beginning of what I had prepared. I spoke a word of power and it shattered, sending individual sections careening through the room like detached helicopter rotors. It was like the worst industrial accident I could imagine- the gore was indescribable and in the end it scarcely mattered. More simply flowed in over the blood slick tiles to replace them. The entire city of London was committed to this attack. Then he burst into the room, howling through the doors like the grand-daddy of all dementors, and I knew the time of our defensive line was short.

It was Voldemort, of course. Of course he couldn’t just lay down and die at Hogwarts. Snape was dead or completely subsumed by the meme, and the Dark Lord was in full control of his body, cackling and dealing out death like a whirlwind. I dismissed the Patronus, mentally consigning those I hadn’t yet rescued from the dementors to their fates, and ran out ahead of the lines. Forming a great wedge of force I plowed through the section of zombies immediately between us, and with my magic giving force to my legs, leapt at him, connecting and knocking him out of the air. He wasn’t the least bit surprised to see me. “ Ah, my faithful student! Putting some of my lessons to work, I see! Pity I didn’t teach you everything.” He caught fire, every exposed inch of him, and I howled at the feeling of my skin burning and splitting. He laughed at my pain. “Should have killed me when you had the chance, you fool!”

I was flung loose, trailing smoke and fire. Suddenly I knew how my wife felt in these situations. Just between me and the thoughts in my head- I didn’t disagree with him. But something had told me, when I had him at gunpoint, that he had one final act to play in this drama. And now, here he was. Even as I burned and fell, I felt a kind of serenity- the knowledge that pieces were falling into place just as they should. Further explosions were rocking the building when I landed. I could only pray that Hermione was alright elsewhere. My magic was knitting me back together as I stood, shakily. The other defenders of the hall were dying more swiftly now, the zombie hordes having reached and overwhelmed their first barricades. With another word I activated the second trap. A wall of fire swept up from nowhere- on the side facing the defenders, cool to the touch. But on this side? The zombies closest were blasted to ash in an instant. I was fifty feet away, and the heat was re-igniting my burns. I screamed in agony, but hurried to sink into the floor with another spell. Voldemort caught my action, and did the same in the ceiling. Just in time- the wall flashed forward, sweeping from one end of the hall to the other, and just like that the zombies were cleared a second time, reduced to ash and blackened husks. We re-emerged from our hiding places but now the other defenders were free to attack the few Efreet who had survived the second trap by virtue of their fire immunity, and Voldemort himself. Amelia Bones rallied to my aid personally, even as I picked myself up. I finally got enough air in my lungs to taunt Voldemort right back. “There is no killing you, you old idiot. Or me. Haven’t you figured that out yet? How many of us are practically immortal now? Everything that happens here-” I gestured around the hall- “is a duel of philosophies. Your isolationism, your violence and terror, versus our humanism. The belief that if we just hold the line long enough-” I gasped in relief as Amelia’s healing supplemented my own, bringing me back to my feet- “they’ll grow enough to save themselves.”

“Lunacy,” he sneered. Snuffing my fire at the doorways and casually obliterating two more defenders, he advanced while another wave of zombies poured in. “Every life you touch is doomed the second you touch it. You have saved no-one. Your wife? That child you think of as your first pupil ? You haven’t even seen what’s happening above, have you.” He gestured and a section of the ceiling cleared, revealing the freshly gathered storm clouds of Matt’s thunderbirds. But beyond and through them the towering ship dominated all- and beyond it, the sun was still visible. Something was wrong with it. It was rippling, expanding. “This world has minutes to live, Peakes. The arch and what lies beyond is my only hope, now. I’ll rip the ability to narrate from your still-breathing corpse and I’ll use it myself. But this world is going to die with you.” Amelia rushed at him, conjuring a drilling hex of some sort, and he slapped her contemptuously aside with a burst of force. “There is no power on earth you could grant, that would give these pathetic remnants a chance against me.”

A shudder through the building from below caught both of our attention. The floor rocked - something was happening in the lower levels. But my attention wasn’t the same as that of my magic. While he’d been taunting, it had reached out and found the statues at the entrance. In his distraction now, the bronze centaur managed to grab him- and none too gently, either. He snarled as it pulled him back away from me, towards the center of the grand room. “We keep trying to explain to you,” I said calmly, “That it isn’t about you. Or us. We don’t have to grant or withhold anything.” I paused, feeling sheepish. “I admit, I didn’t get that until recently. I thought my wife was wrong. That we’d have to flip some switch or make some grand personal stand, in the end, to convince the world not to die.” Speaking of grand personal stands- the floor beneath him exploded, as I’d half expected it to when I’d caught a hint of Merlin’s aura down below. It blasted upwards with the power of a small inferno. I took shelter behind a buttress in the wall, but Voldemort and the remains of the statue were blown clear into the darkening sky. Looking down into the crater, I could see a solid seven or eight levels of Ministry below me, to a shattered tree still floating in the midst of a vast cathedral. “But that wasn’t the case. We just had to play a role- take the lead for a while, help where we could, and keep faith in people.” I couldn’t see her below me. But I knew she was down there, somewhere. “It could have been any one of them who saved the world, in the end. A soldier or a hobbit or a potions professor. But I think, this time… it’s going to be a clever young lady, in her first year at wizard school.”

He came roaring back even as the cleansing rains began to fall, flinging fire and death as he flew. The scattered last dregs of the defenders fired back at him, but it wasn’t their magic that held him, in the end. It was the zombies, eyes now clear for the first time in a week. They remembered what he’d done, once the Obliviate rain hit them and his version of the meme was lifted. And they knew him for what he was. A thousand wands were raised towards him, from the street above the Ministry, from the hall where they’d been swarming. From every side. A thousand different spells hit him at once. “ None of this matters! There will be no tomorrow for any of you!” he shrieked, as his corporeal body- well, Snape’s, I guessed- was torn into ragged pieces.

“There’s always a tomorrow,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes, it’s not the tomorrow you expect. Personally? That’s what keeps me turning the pages.” I headed downwards to find my protégé.

----

Gretchen couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. She stood in front of the great stone arch, its ragged black veil blowing in a breeze she couldn’t feel, and wondered if there’d be a chance for peace on the other side. Somehow she doubted it. Every inch of her mind was screaming at her to walk through, to take the exit, to cut off this route before anyone else could use it- but her body didn’t move forward. She had won, all she had to do was reach out and take the prize, but-

“You don’t want to, do you.” It was a voice behind her. A voice she’d heard before- in her head, as well as in person. A voice she’d imagined from the books she’d loved so much as a child. She turned. Hermione was there, Fawkes the phoenix on her shoulder- looking every inch like the witch that Gretchen had ached to be, once upon a time. “You don’t want to leave this world. The one place you wanted to be, more than anywhere else. So much that you got your wish- and then something happened that turned it into a nightmare for you.” A great hole stood in the ceiling behind her- she’d been so focused on her objective that she hadn’t even heard it being made, or the explosion that had torn the roof off the building. The rains from above were already beginning to drip down.

Gretchen tried to deny it. “ This wasn’t the place I wanted to be. The world I read about, that you lived in… it was magical. Beautiful. This is just…”

Hermione shrugged. “Awful? Full of death, and destruction? I don’t know how my life might have gone. But- I think that, if you’re living in the story, it’s never quite as much fun as it looks from the outside. It’s up to you to decide if that’s better than the alternative.”

That was puzzling. Weren’t they supposed to fight now? Gretchen looked at the other girl. She was battered and bruised, but she had magic. It wouldn’t even be a contest. “You aren’t just going to take the choice from me?”

Hermione glanced at her, and the arch, and then back the way she’d come. At the rain. Something about it tickled Gretchen’s recent memories. “The way I see it, you’ve had all your choices taken since this started. But when I looked over your shoulder, I saw two images in that mirror. Two answers, to the ‘Way out’ you were seeking. The arch or the rain. Leave this place, or stay here with us.” She crossed her arms and Fawkes on her shoulder coo’ed softly. “I won’t take that choice from you.” Then she muttered, “I could use some more female friends anyway. Boys, honestly.”

Gretchen didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. To come all this way, to be so close to what her mind was telling her was a victory- and yet, for the desires of her heart to be pulling her towards that strange hole in the roof, and the water that fell through it. “How- how can I decide? How can I know what’s right?”

The other witch considered that question. “Well. If it was me, and I couldn’t trust my mind… I’d ask someone I trusted to decide for me. But you barely know me, so that’s not-” Hermione jumped in surprise as Gretchen practically materialized in front of her, she’d moved so fast.

Gretchen stared at her with her big glowing blue eyes filled with longing. “I trust you. I’ve read everything about you. You always do what’s right. Please- “ she held out her hands- “show me what to do.” The Concept in her head was howling, raging at the walls of her mind. But it wasn’t Hermione. Just this once, she could ignore it.

Hermione smiled at her, at her, and took her hands. Together, they stepped backwards into that cold falling water.

“Oh,” said Gretchen softly, in surprise. “It’s- I remember now.” She collapsed into Hermione’s arms, looking up at her. “This was-” words escaped her, for a moment. She settled eventually on “Thank you. Thank you.” And then sleep finally took her, and she lay still.

----

I found them together, soaked to the bone, at the bottom of the crater made by Merlin’s passing and Voldemort’s demise. Hermione held the other girl, now deep in unconsciousness, in her arms. She looked at me when I came down the hole, Fawkes spreading his wings above her in a vain attempt to ward off the rain. “What do we do?”

I indicated the sky above. “The ship was more dangerous than we thought. Sun’s going nova.” I pulled the walkie-talkie out of my pocket. “Ground control to Major Haley. Two- no, sorry, three to beam up. And an arch.”

There was a brief instant where we felt like we were inside a mirrored ball that contained the entire universe, somehow, and then we were standing on a deck of that vast ship, looking out at a beautiful blue sky courtesy the layer after layer of fields. The gang was all here, I noted- even some that I didn’t think had been in the story up to this point. It was practically a convention in here. The arch itself thudded to the ground behind us. “Oh, hello Skylar, Margaret” I said, indicating Haley’s mother. She blinked at me but was otherwise so overwhelmed that she didn’t immediately respond.

“How did you know I was the ship?” asked an avatar that looked like a surprisingly close facsimile of my wife. The others paused and looked at us, even Jada and Matt, who had apparently been squaring up for some kind of battle right there in the hangar.

“Well I knew it wasn’t going to kill you,” I said, with what I hoped was absolute confidence. She grinned and threw a hug around me. I returned it with as much strength as I had left in me.

We filled each other in as quickly as we could. Haley’s fight, the arrival of the Coordinator, the existence of the barrier and the supernova- and the final fates of Holmes, Merlin, and Asriel. And Snape-slash-Voldemort, of course. It was not a short series of tales, but we hurried it as much as we could. “So what do we do now?” Asked Jada, cutting right to the point. “Watch the world get eaten by a supernova, assuming we even survive it, and then float through space forever? Much as I enjoy some of your company, I think I’d prefer the tender mercies of the void, to that.”

I shook my head. “No. Haley, do you remember earlier, when you said you couldn’t fight this battle without thinking about tomorrow?”

She clearly did. “Of course, and you looked like you’d just thought of something. Are you going to tell me, or do we have to watch the world flash-fry first?”

I smiled and said two words. “Groundhog Day.”

Her avatar’s eyes widened and she actually shuddered a little in shock, then glanced at the arch we had rescued. “Of course. Of course. It can go anywhere, right?” I nodded. “So why not back in time, to do this over again? Do it right ? Make sure nobody gets hurt? That’s brilliant. But who’s going to be our looper?” She asked.

“Me,” Hermione said without hesitation, stepping up to the portal. How funny, not even a full day ago I’d have fought her on that point. But I got it now. It didn’t matter what age she was. It was her story, here and now, had been since the moment Harriet abandoned it- maybe it had been before, maybe she’d have saved the first narrative, and I just hadn’t let it go far enough. Haley and I were just tourists here.

The others were still staring at this little drama in various states of confusion, but I smiled at her. “You’re gonna do great, kid. You understand what needs to change, before the loops end?”

She threw a hug around me with surprising strength for such a young girl, and the bird on her shoulder cawed loudly and spread its wings. “I think so. Based on what you were saying just now it’s the… the barrier, right? We need to reach this same point, but without the thing that will trap us all here when we die.”

Haley nodded agreement. “I doubt any of us but you is going to remember past iterations of the loop. If you do nothing it will likely play out just like this. Understand that when you do break it, things are going to lock into place on that last run. Make it as close to perfect as you can.”

No pressure on the kid or anything, wife! But Hermione stepped back and gave us a brave smile. The arch rippled behind her, and I could almost hear the voices from the other side. It sounded like… like a young boy waking up alone in an empty house, with an invitation to his first day at Hogwarts. Like second chances. She took a deep breath, and stepped through it, vanishing from our world.

We glanced at each other. “What now?” asked Matt, looking to Haley.

“Now we get out of this world as fast as possible and take our places in the next,” she said. A rumble cut through the atmosphere of the ship. She’d lowered the shields. I closed my eyes, and found her hand in mine. At least this time it would be quick.

The supernova came, and we died, and we won.

----

Inside a crystalline bubble in the midst of a sea of great spheres, a world came to an end. One of the little dancing lights inside of it went backwards in some dimension that was hard to register, even as all of the others were flung outside and into that great crystalline shell. They stuck fast there, for a moment, but then- the world reconstituted itself. Reverted to an earlier state, one that demanded their presence. They were drawn back down to resume their courses once again, and that ultimate fate at the crystal wall was staved off once more.

We’re doing it, I felt more than thought, body still linked with Haley’s somehow. I didn’t just mean that as a victory cry. We were doing it, the two of us. With my perception of this strange world I was the navigation, and she was the engine- the force that could turn back the whole world. We steered the ship of the universe backwards in time and it felt… it felt right. Like this was what we had been made for. More than just narrators. Is this why the Coordinator fears us? Haley pushed and I turned and the whole world of The Cauldron Stirred revolved, again and again. Faster and faster. Living up to its name, I thought. I could only think in the interim between each revolution- my soul would get sucked down at the beginning and launched back out at the end for another pass, devoid of any memory of the time in-between, but that was alright. I knew Hermione would come through.

But there was a concern growing in me. It was… using something of Haley, to reverse time like this. She was vast and powerful, but even now she didn’t have an infinite supply of whatever energy it was that was powering this transformation. We were burning her for fuel. I held her hand as she diminished- I’d never let go, and I knew Hermione would finish.

I couldn’t say how many times we revolved. Hundreds? Thousands? We whirled so fast that the shell containing us all creaked and splintered, but did not break. Haley was down to almost nothing now, barely bigger than when I’d first seen her in this way, after my first death. Then the world spun a final time, and with a tremendous crash-